Russia police car chase ends with cash in the wind

MOSCOW (Reuters Life!) - A Russian fisheries official suspected of accepting bribes tossed 10 million roubles ($322,000) from his car after a police chase and a crash on a busy Moscow highway, investigators said on Monday.

Pursued by police, Federal Fisheries Agency official Boris Simonov crashed his Cadillac on Friday and frantically flung 10 million roubles ($322,000) into the wind, local media reported.

State-run First Channel television showed scores of large-denomination rouble notes being collected by police and cast into a torn, grimy cardboard box beside a thoroughfare in south-central Moscow.

A spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee said Simonov's boss, Roman Postnikov, who oversaw two Moscow rivers, was arrested on suspicion of forging a contract that allowed a fishing firm operate without the proper documents.

Both fishery officials will be jailed for two months pending further investigation, the committee said.

President Dmitry Medvedev has vowed to tackle Russia's endemic graft, but analysts say little has changed since he took office in May 2008.